


Humans are Strange, Dude

by TheAsexualofSpades



Series: Quarantine Drabbles [16]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kaiju, M/M, Newt is a Dork, Newt is an anxiety gay and he needs some validation, Newton and Hermann are Drift Compatible, Science, can be either platonic or romantic you choose, kind of, the drift is not inherently romantic and i will die on this hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:53:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23561101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAsexualofSpades/pseuds/TheAsexualofSpades
Summary: Newt has trouble sleeping, even when it's not nightmares. It's far from the strangest thing in the Shatterdome.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler & Hermann Gottlieb, Newton Geiszler & Mako Mori, Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb, Raleigh Becket & Mako Mori, Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori
Series: Quarantine Drabbles [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677655
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38
Collections: PACIFIC RIM





	Humans are Strange, Dude

**Author's Note:**

> Newt and Mako are siblings. There are bigger problems than holding grudges.

Fandom: Pacific Rim

Prompt: “It’s okay, I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

* * *

There’s not a damn thing in the world Newt wants more than to be able to sleep like a normal person, whatever the hell that is.

Even if his chosen life as part of an organization that doesn’t know what ‘normal’ is outside of Kaiju and Jaegers, he doubts he’d ever be able to snatch more than a few hours here and there.

His brain just doesn’t _stop,_ and while this is great for when he has to dissect the Kaiju remnants before cell degradation sets in or when he needs to run a DNA analysis at ass o’clock in the morning, it’s not great when the rest of his body is on the verge of collapse because all he’s running on right now is espresso, ramen, and spite.

Then he collapses mid-argument with Hermann and wakes up in the med bay with the German doctor scolding him, he knows it’s getting worse. Admittedly, it got him closer to his lab partner, which is good. They don’t have as many bad fights anymore, it’s mostly just bickering and half-hearted insults that are forgotten in the next ten minutes. And, uh, Hermann’s work is _really fuckin’ cool._ Newt’s never had the patience for numbers as abstract concepts, he always needs them to be grounded in a context he can touch, work with, extrapolate. He can’t use numbers alone to tell a story but Hermann, Hermann _can_ and that’s badass as _fuck._

Hermann blushes right down to his plaid collar when Newt tells him so, fiddling with the blackboard eraser and getting chalk dust everywhere. And at this point, it’s no big deal if Newt passes him the pack of wet wipes he keeps in every desk drawer. Listen, alien apocalypse aside, Newt’s life is going a hell of a lot better than it could be.

Doesn’t mean he still can’t wake up in the middle of the night, head buzzing, chest tightening about some made-up issue he can remember from the remnant of a dream his hell-brain created to pass the time.

Newt sighs, heaving himself out of bed. It’s not even _nightmares,_ that at least he could get. But they’re not so often anymore which really doesn’t make sense, considering what he does for a living. It’s just…random bits of absolute nonsense that his brain manages to craft incredibly complex problems out of and convince Newt it’s something to be worried about. Between the Kaiju and this, Newt’s…

Well, he’s kind of forgetting which ones are real.

He ends up in a kitchen. He knows it’s not the one right down the hall from his and Hermann’s lab because the coffee maker’s still the boring retail one, not the juiced-up one he and Hermann put together. Nor is there post-it notes on every surface when they need to put a brainchild down before they forget it and then forget the post-it note and have too much pride to walk back to get it. So he doesn’t know where he is but this place has coffee and that’s all that matters.

“Newt?”

Newt glances over his shoulder, expecting sweater vests and glasses but getting purple hair instead.

“Oh, hey Mako,” he replies, already reaching for another mug, “you want coffee?”

“No, thank you,” she says, still taking his offered mug, “I am having tea.”

“Good choice.” He takes of swig of coffee and sighs, jitters already fading. “Uh, what’re you doing up, dude? Isn’t your—“ he waves his hand—“job less predictable than mine?”

“Perhaps.” Mako takes a seat in the corner, waving Newt to join. “But you know what that means.”

Newt’s may not be nightmares, but Mako’s are. They figured that out when they were younger and bunked in the same hall. They’d run into each other in the middle of the night, tear-stained and in need of someone to share it with. So it’s easy to slide that routine on like an old coat, patches a little more faded than they used to be but the material still grips them right.

They make polite conversation until one of them snorts and they’re back to siblings, bantering about swoon trials or Stacker or whatever prank the Kaidonovskys were planning next. Newt has to put his mug down to keep from spilling the coffee everywhere because Mako’s Russian accent is _atrocious_ but goddamn is her impression of Sasha’s face dead on.

“Mako?”

“In here.”

Newt looks at the door to see a bleary-eyed Raleigh yawn his way inside, blinking through the fluorescent lights until he finds Mako. He gives a sleepy little wave and shuffles to the coffee machine. Newt frowns. Raleigh definitely doesn’t look like he should be up right now and god knows the man needs to sleep. He fell asleep outside Gipsy Danger once, apparently, if Mako’s to be believed—and she always is—so what the hell is he doing in this kitchen?

“Drift,” Raleigh says when Newt asks him as much, sitting down next to Mako, already looking more awake. “Pilots are still sharing some connection outside the Jaeger. One of us is up, other one probably is too.”

“Oh shit, I, uh, didn’t realize that. You uh…you could’ve told me, Mako, that I was…keeping you.”

“But you were not,” Mako corrects with a small smile, “and I am sure Raleigh does not mind.”

“Nah. It’s okay, I couldn’t sleep anyway.” Raleigh drains half of a mug the size of Newt’s head in a single drink. “You’re good. Plus…”

He shifts slightly, nudging Mako’s shoulder and making eye contact with Newt.

“I get nightmares about Kaiju. I won’t hold a grudge about it.”

Oh. Oh right. Newt’s spectacular foot-in-mouth moment within two minutes of meeting the man. He still remembers the steel hurt behind Raleigh’s’ gaze when he called Yamarashi: ‘2500 tons of awesome’ and everyone else in the elevator simultaneously cringing away from him.

“Hey, uh, listen man,” Newt says, turning the coffee mug back and forth in his hands, “I, uh, when we first met I didn’t mean to—“

“Hey,” Raleigh calls to interrupt Newt’s frantic ramblings, “what part of ‘I won’t hold a grudge’ didn’t work for you?”

The man raises his mug and takes another sip. The eyes that stare back at him aren’t the hard ones that threatened to pick him apart in the elevator, nor are they the disgusted ones he’s gotten from just about everyone else.

“I ain’t gonna say I get it, because believe me those bastards are _ugly_ when you get right up close—“ Newt snorts at the face he pulls—“but I get that they’re your life. And I get hyper fixations so I ain’t gonna try and knock you off of it.”

The words ‘I forgive you’ aren’t actually said out loud but then again Newt didn’t actually say ‘I’m sorry’ either so yeah it’ll work. Plus, looking at Raleigh now he knows he’s not angry with him. That’s a bonus.

“So,” Mako says, breaking the silence, “what have you found?”

“What?”

“You study the Kaiju remains that we can find, what have you found?”

Newt glances back and forth between the two of them but they both look interested. Screw it.

“Well, uh, every Kaiju looks completely unique on the outside, right? Each one’s got something different, be it the head or the legs or the coloring…”

He launches into his explanation, talking about how they’re being genetically created from the same core sample and there’s probably some common thread that can be used to do _something._ Mako and Raleigh interrupt him every so often to politely ask questions but they’re smart questions, they get it, they get why his work is important. He finishes his mini-lecture and pauses, suddenly realizing he’s just talked at them for a while. Then Mako takes a drink of her tea and swallows it slowly.

“From that perspective,” she says carefully, “they _are_ cool.”

“Yeah.” Raleigh frowns in concentration. “That’s…really interesting. So whoever’s making the Kaiju is making them like we’re making the Jaegers?”

“Exactly!”

Raleigh nods. “That doesn’t surprise me that much.”

“Wait, really?”

“Nah. Yancy always said it felt like we were in a weird arms race with the Kaiju. Not to much of a shock to figure out he’s right.”

“Humans are ridiculous,” Mako nods sagely.

“Utterly.”

“Mhmm. Yep.” Newt takes a drink from his mug.

There’s a moment of silence.

Raleigh chuckles.

Mako hides a smile behind her mug.

Newt snorts into his coffee.

He’s not completely sure who breaks _entirely_ first but soon it doesn’t matter. They’re all leaning desperately against the table or the wall, trying to keep themselves upright as the laughter rolls over them in waves. it’s a gloriously uncontrollable laughter, bordering on hysteria that makes Newt’s sides ache and tears threaten the corners of his eyes. They’re still giggling when Hermann comes into the kitchen, squinting at the three of them.

“What on earth are you three laughing about?”

“Humans,” Mako supplies helpfully through the last of it.

“They’re ridiculous, dude.” Newt grins at Hermann’s affronted expression.

“Have you _met_ yourself, Newton? Does this really come as a shock to you?”

“You don’t have that much of a right to talk, dude.”

“And that gives you one?”

“I’m not the one that puts the popcorn bag in the microwave and stands right next to it!”

“Just because you prefer your popcorn charred to a crisp doesn’t mean we all do, Newton.”

“Listen, slightly burned popcorn is the _shit._ ”

“I think you and I have different definitions of the word ‘slightly.’”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come yell at me on tumblr while we're all in quarantine. 
> 
> https://a-small-batch-of-dragons.tumblr.com/


End file.
